Ive been trying to figure out how to use lame mp3 in vegas and Im stuck!!! Tried putting the dll in the directory and the plug-in section, installed the exe of lame and still I cant select mp3 format in my audio format... Theres actually no MP3 audio format in Vegas... thats strange? Theres only the mpeg layer 3 which is a very low quality format that I dont want to use. ....
I would appreciated if someone could help me with that.. thank you

Thanks, I did that Now I see the codec and can select it.. but now everytime I try to render it gives me an error message that it couldnt open a codec... I did different tests and it seems that its the lame codec that doesnt work cause it works with other codecs... any ideas on that one

I had the same issue with rendering directly with the h264... then I installed the ffshow codec and only then I could render... any reason for that

My version of Vegas 7 shipped with it's own MP3 codecs and a dozen or so templates. No need to install anything else. It can also render AVC using the Mainconcept AVC encoder to an .mp4 container out of the box.

I just upgraded from Vegas 6, to 8, and hoped
that it'd finally play nice with LAME MP3 codec, but it does not,
which is very frustrating.
And just so this is clear what people are talking about when they ask about this.
This is when you Render to standard AVI type. Under Custom - Audio tab there's
a list of codecs. One of them is MPEG Layer 3, and it's worthless due to low bitrates.
The other is LAME Mp3, and it offers a full range of bitrates, and none of them
work. Vegas always complains that it can't open the codec when you actually try
to render the video. This same codec works fine in other apps that
can render AVI files.

What I usually end up doing is Rendering my AVI files with DiVX or XviD
video codec in Vegas, and 32000-44100Hz raw PCM audio.
And then open the file up in Virtualdub, copy video stream
directly (no compression), and turn on Audio compression
using LAME MP3 at appropriate bitrate. It renders it at about
500fps, so it's very quick, but still annoying to have to
always go through that extra step, with one extra large temp file.

DiVX/XviD + MP3 AVI format is still one of the most popular on the
net and Vegas still doesn't support it. That's pretty sad.

Vegas 6 ships with a fully functional MP3 encoder. You get 20 free encodes before you have to register (also free), and from then on it is unlimited. The bitrates are covered all the way up to 320 kbps. I haven't checked if 7 has the same registration requirement, as I never encode to Divx/Xvid out of Vegas.

Rarewaves definitely a good source for latest version. But, Lame 3.98.4 hosted on Video Help it has everything acm, dll, exe and DS.
It is also one of the best release of Lame which gives an excellent sound quality as compared to all previous releases.